The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate in Your 20s

You'll have to do a a before and after because that square is about to completely change. Like you're going to take steps in the right direction and it can make a big impact and it can change your life. You get the real estate next to it. Your jaw will drop and you'll think, I should have bought this. 100k to invest in real estate. Where's going to return the biggest amount if it hits from South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between.

This is Get In the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation. Before we get into the show, I need to remind you that today's episode is brought to you by my friends at NCW. You might remember when I had Dan Natalie on the show, talking about how they built a national staffing recruiting company over the past 25 years, specializing in skilled trades. They are looking for new members to join their team. If you're looking for work in recruiting, sales, or general business operations, you need to check out teamnc.

com. Not only have they been voted a top workplace by Indie Star, listed on the IBJ Fast 25, and featured on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest private growing companies in America, but I also have a personal laundry list of friends that work at NCW and absolutely love it. To learn more and check out their open roles, check out teamncw. com and tell them you heard about it on Get Inur. Today, I'm joined by Max Moore and Tyler Lingal, co-founders of Roots Reality Co.

, a real estate company based right here in Indianapolis. Now, Max is a driven real estate agent turned social media creator known for helping first-time buyers get in the game. After launching his career as a GNC franchise owner, Max leads a top performing team at Roots that's closed over 125 deals in the past year alone. Holy smokes. Tyler is a former Teach for America core member and history teacher. We might talk about that a little bit.

Since then, he has closed more than 150 transactions and now focuses on helping clients build wealth with intention. Today, we're going to be talking about the journey of roots, how you guys ended up going from teacher and GNC supplement seller to uh to real estate owners, talking about how Indiana was ranked one of the hottest markets across the country. And listen till the end. We're going to be talking about a special spot in both of these guys' hearts that's hot on the real estate market and that you need to know about. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Nate. Pleasure to be here.

Thanks for having us. I feel like I'm driving in my car on my morning commute. Let's

look at They love They know what to say. They like butter me up early on in the show. Um guys, I'm excited for this one. We have been friends for a long time now. I mean, Tyler, probably like several years at this point.

Yeah. I mean, I think it was a run club or No, you comment on a LinkedIn post. I was starting a podcast. It was essentially supposed to be like the first version of this, like interviewing top entrepreneurs, founders. You were my first guest, dude. yet. I forgot.

How You Built This Indies.

How You Built This Indie.

Yep.

Yeah. It's not around anymore.

Some of my friends still say that was the best interview I'd ever did cuz we met at the Union 525 building. That was like where you were hosting it at the time.

Yep.

And then Tyler and I started like battle back and forth about what what coffee shop was better. He's a Hubard and Cravens guy. I was Java House guy. Like back and forth there.

So he's the new age. I'm the old age.

And and you were also putting out some content. And I was like, "Dude, if I could I just got to get more followers than Tyler." Like like I'm a competitive guy. I was like, "I just got to go get more followers." Like, and then

I just had one reel that went off. Literally, it was people hated it. It was like top five restaurants and I just named like the most weird

I mean, that's the one thing people will comment. But you and Max have known each other for even longer than that. You guys have been working together for how long now?

Going on three years.

Three years. Okay. Max, you have an interesting story. When I heard about the guy who bought a GNC franchise from his boss out in Avon Planefield.

It's in Planefield.

In Planefield. Like that was your like one of like your first job?

Yeah, it was my first job in high school working at GNC and uh four years in purchased a store.

Like go from high schooler to purchasing your boss's store? Like what was the thought of like, you know what, I want to buy a GNC.

I was commuting into work and listened to this Bigger Pockets episode that was talking about buying a six-figure income. the host on the show or the guest was saying that they went in and were able to buy all these franchises, go restructure the operations, boost it up and exit. And I was sitting there like, wait, I've kind of done this for this guy. Like, I'm running these stores, I'm doing the show, I'm doing all of it, paying everybody ordering. Like, I could do it on my own. So, I went in, asked for a raise to 100K or to purchase a store. And he's like, "Well, I can't pay you 100K. You know that. You do my books." And I was like, "Let's get the PA together."

But how how old are you at the time?

19. How does a 19-year-old afford a GNC location?

Everything's based on the business and revenue, which I did not know at the time offering because it's just an SBA loan. So, so long as you can prove that the business is going to make and has been and historically will continue to make, uh, they're they're willing to lend. The GNC of it all was the hardest part. Uh, because they have these like rigorous have to have 400k in liquidity and all these different things. So had to find some co-signers there. And then based on experience and uh just revenue growth in the two franchises, GNC waved it. And we're like, "Yeah, we're good with it. You can go through." Because it wasn't like a full underwriting process. It was more relational.

So they just relationally were like, "Yeah, this is our guy and he's going to take it to the moon." And I bought the store and then started Roots four months later.

Excellent. Right.

Still wondering why you did that.

Yeah. Well, I guess like one of the big things when it comes to roots is knowing about, you know, building wealth through real estate. Knowing what you know now, had you been driving, would you have still bought a GNC location,

or if there's a 19-year-old out there listening, is there a better way for them to build wealth, have this 100k job?

Roots wouldn't exist today if I didn't buy GNC.

Oh, wait. Why do you say that?

I wouldn't know the administrative business side of it all. Like Tyler can attest, our LLC exists for a reason. Our bank account exists for a reason. I wouldn't I would have messed everything up for Roots, which is a partnership, right? And getting it all the founding docs and and the the important pieces together. I wouldn't have known how to do that and I kind of failed forward with GNC and learned along the way by making a ton of mistakes. So when I met Tyler, I could speak with authority. This is how we're going to do it. This is how we're going to get in. This is how we're going to go after it. uh if I had just if I could go back, the only the only pivot I would have done is leverage that the relationship with the uh my boss and done some like sweat equity type of seller finance as opposed to going straight for the uh SBA not knowing that rates were going to go where they go.

Yeah. And and a lot of people don't know that sometimes sellers of anything are willing to, you know, carry financing, give you terms, and you're kind of just like scared to ask at the or don't even know to ask. like what what would you say whether it's buying property or buying businesses like what are a few questions or common misconceptions that people miss

in the land of like how to get more from the seller?

Well, a lot of times people are like I'm I'm not sitting on 100k in cash like I can't buy a business. I'm not I everyone say buy a house like right now people that are you know 25 30 years old are like I can't afford a house like I'm not sitting on 20% down

but are there like ways of like oh these are kind of misconceptions

I I can hit on that. So, I bought an Airbnb in uh 2024 with 15K and the home was about 300K. And so, if you do the math on 20%, that's like 50K or something. I could be totally off, but in the

We don't do public math on the pod.

You did you put three three to three and a half% down.

Yeah. Yeah. And and it wasn't through like an FHA or first-time home buyer. It was actually through uh the seller had the idea, so I'm not going to take all the credit. He was like I was like, "That's a great deal. I'd love to finance it, but like I don't have 20%."

He was like, "Oh, yeah. I'll just carry back some equity." So, I'm I pay him I have a 7% note over five years with him. I can refinance and pay that off or I can uh sell the property just refinance. So, um you know, it's essentially asking the question of like, hey, are you willing to delay your payout on this property on this business or whatever over the course of x many years and make passive income through the interest payments? And it's all income and expenses and cash flow.

if you can make the amount of income you need to pay off your debt and not be plugging money into this business or property every month. So, you you really have to be astute with running the numbers. And Max did that earlier age, you know, 19 than than I ever learned. I still am like fairly weak at running the numbers. I think, you know, some people think I'm like really strong at it. I It takes a while, but you just got to start.

You just

I mean, I think you're doing yourself a disservice there, right? Uh, I feel like I I subscribed to your newsletter and I like commented back about something and all of a sudden like in my inbox was like the numbers about this like multi- this multi-unit. Everybody's like, "Oh, you can totally do this." And I was like, "Bro, am I about to buy like three new properties? Let's go. Let's get fired up."

Um, well, but this always wasn't your thing. Like when you first graduated and started your career, you were a Teach for America history teacher on the near west side of Indianapolis.

Yeah, I was at a charter school, a place there with a Teach for America. I had like a mid college, you know, some people have midlife crisises. I had a mid-col crisis. So, I was an economics major. And I was like, oh crap, there's only one thing to do. It's like go be a professor or some research thing somewhere because it wasn't even a business degree. I was like, I don't I don't want to like go into that. So, I was like, let's just do teaching because I love my history teachers growing up. They they always had like the best I think it was like the competition in the games. So, I was like, I'm going to do that for kids. Got into that. Um, and uh, yeah, just did Teach for America because I wanted to impact um, inner inner city.

And that's a two-year program.

Yeah.

So, you did two years of Teach for America. You're at a charter school here in Indianapolis. And where along that that journey do you side like you know what like being a 40-year teacher like that career is not the one for me.

Yeah. I think it was once I was four years in in the middle of COVID. And

so after Teach for America, you did two more.

I did two more. Those might have been the hardest two. Well, COVID started, so I'm teaching on Zoom. Kind of like the amount of effort and hours I'm putting in versus what the take-home was, you'd have to really be passionate. I mean, you'd have to be a saint to continue doing it, which is why they're losing talent in education like crazy. But I was just like, dude, I want to I want to go build wealth. I want to go uh make an impact my own way because I was confined to what the bureaucracy and the standard said. And I was like, screw this. I'm just leaving it all and I want to wake up on Monday and set my schedule. Right? That's the dream for like all of us entrepreneur like you. And so I was like real estate

and you think right you're like yeah I can just set my own schedule

now I know like it's like no I'm chained actually to my schedule and my you know Google calendar.

It's like oh yeah like you know I can go do anything whenever I want to as long as you put it on my calendar two months from now. Give me some space. You're essentially trading like they say like you know being an entrepreneur you work for yourself ultimate freedom but really it's like you're trading being chained from 9 to5 to being chained in your mind all day every day right you know 24 but you get to control it so

and a lot of times too I feel like uh people get into entrepreneurship or you know even like the the normal real estate agent that like doesn't start their own thing is still kind of like you're building your own book of business like there are a lot of careers that are kind of entrepreneurial but like you get into oh I'm going to make so much money and then you realize like rent gets paid, your staff gets paid, the freaking cleaning lady gets paid and like whatever's left at the end like that's for you, buddy. Like the leader eats last. So, uh I I just think that was like a funny realization was like a lot of times people get into entrepreneurship like I'm going to be so rich. I'm going to make so much money. It's like you you got to love the grind. You got to love, you know, being Yeah. chained to it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365, no holidays.

I did love real estate from the start, though. I will say that.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you leave teaching and you wake up on Monday and you can set your own schedule. Like, what what do you do? How do you end up getting into real estate?

Yeah. So, I had uh Brian shut I don't know if you've had him on the podcast.

Uh Refinary 46.

Yeah. Refinery. And uh they just sold Yeah. Homestense HVAC.

Sat down with a meeting with him and he was like, "Don't run away from your past. Like, include it in your story narrative." And he was like, "The fact you're a teacher and have all these experiences, you should intertwine like your current experiences." And I had this like old rickety house in Irvington that I was like kind of renovating and renting out rooms to buddies. So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to take the lessons I learned from that and like teach, you know, whether it's on social media or newsletter or events." And uh it worked. I mean, in short, it was like, dude, the real estate industry is a bunch of like boomergs who drive around in Cadillacs and like shove business cards in your face and like if I was like the young guy going to educate people, like it really works. What year was this when you kind of started?

Tail end of co is when um so it was really competitive when I got in it was like everything was over ask contingencies waved. So I was like I thought that was normal. Now I'm realizing you know that wasn't but you know but so you get in at in 2021 and at that point cuz nowadays I feel like you say oh yeah you're the real estate agent that makes social media content. It's like every real estate agent makes some sort like some of my biggest competition are real estate agents trying to make like local Indiana content and find hidden gems. No names named

but you know I digress.

It wasn't us by

Yeah. Well earlier on like when I was like five like you were my top three coffee shops and Tyler's like here are my top three coffee shops. Here are my top five restaurants. But it's it's competitive and like I'm the type of person I don't want anyone to not make content. I want I want you to put your best content out. Whoever they are, put your best Indiana content out cuz I'll go beat it. Like you're not prepared to eat four tenderloins.

You're not prepared.

I didn't realize the competition between you guys. I didn't know the history. I thought we were cheering each other on. You knew I was never in a competition with Nate. I knew I would have lost one.

I'm I'm just saying like uh I like love like a friendly and I'm never like putting people down or like I don't want anyone to make bad content cuz it's all about the state of Indiana. It's all a good thing. I am cheering him on, but it like does light a fire where you see someone drop a fire video or like sell a I don't know, are you guys like competitive?

If you see someone like sell a bigger house or something, you're like, "Shit, I want to be doing that."

Yeah. At the brokerage, there is a stat leaderboard that you can look at at any time, any day of the week, and see who's in the top. And like last year, I was in the top five constantly fighting for that one spot. It came down to like a December deal that closed. And you're not like hoping that your friends don't close their deal or hoping your employees don't close their deals, but you're like, I'm gonna go one up it. Right. Right.

So, how did you guys get connected? What was the intro between Max and Tyler?

Yeah, we got connected through his brother. I went to the same church uh as he did growing up. He's older than me and and was out of the youth group or in the ministry uh much further than I stepped in, but his brother and I are the same age, his youngest. And we uh connected.

Blackout Wednesday.

Yeah. Blackout Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Hey, wait. Where? Where? At what establishment?

Legends Bar

in Avon, Indiana.

This guy knows his bars.

Legend. They had a watch party for the finals. It was on the Pacers Instagram. They said if you're on the west side, you got to go to Legends.

I saw that and I thought that was hilarious. Uh but we connected just there. I think it was like uh December of or it would have been November of 2012.

Max, did you go to Avon?

I did go to Avon. So really it just Yeah. throughout Avon

and Legends. Were you guys in the famous 2014 lip dub?

No, we were in the better one of 20 2018.

Oh,

it was the class I think directly below me.

Yes.

So, they started doing it every two years after and continued on.

So, you guys meet Blackout Wednesday. And how quick did you know that we need to go into business together?

So, when I bumped into his brother, he's like, "Hey, you're posting stuff on uh social media. It sounds like you're into the same thing that my brother is like 15 steps ahead of you in." And I didn't know he existed. I knew Kyle, I knew Ryan, I knew Jake, I knew all the lingual, but I didn't even know that Tyler was a person at all. So, I follow him on Instagram, check his stuff out. I'm like, "Oh, he literally is 10 steps ahead of me actually transacting."

I was at a much larger brokerage with no support, trying to get it all going, posting YouTube content. Don't look up that YouTube content. It's rough. It's very bad. Uh, and was just spinning my wheels trying to get the plane off the ground. He's like, "Go connect with him."

So, I literally DM'd him my life story. Just bought this franchise, GNC. I'm trying to get it all going. Like, I'd love to have a coffee meeting. Throw a coffee meeting on the calendar. We go meet.

He shows up an hour and a half late. Forgot that he had the meeting cuz we were DMing and sits down and he like

Well, you didn't put it on the calendar.

I did. He didn't look at his calendar.

Oh,

yeah. I mean, Tyler, come on.

But, I mean, this this is this actually makes sense as to why each person operates the way they do within the business.

Absolutely. From day one. Like if for people that don't know, Max is the operational like the details guy. Tire shows up hour and a half late. How long's the combo go?

Uh we sat for a good while. I mean for me it was

I thought terrible

conversation.

I thought it went terrible because I did all the talking. I was like this guy's a mute.

But he but here's the here's the thing. So I would take you know this where happens in uni. Like I would take, not that I'm a big shot, but I would take meetings with people that were like looking to get ahead and take their next steps. And then a lot of times you give them advice and they never do anything. I thought that was like, oh, I'm meeting with him just to see where he's at. I didn't know it was like a future partnership meeting cuz he was 5 years younger, right?

And like not hadn't done a lot yet in the in the real estate industry. And I like gave him my whole story and the playbook. And I was like I I Kyle was like, "Hey, how'd it go?" My real and I was like, "Oh yeah, terrible. He probably won't do any of it." But then it was like I looked at my phone like right after he's like, "Oh yeah, I already joined your team and I've done XYZ."

I was like, "Oh this guy actually follows up and follows through." It was literally the first person that I've done one of those meetings that actually like did the things you say.

I I know exactly what you're talking about cuz they're like, "Oh, can I pick your brain? G." And I'm like, "Oh, yeah." Cuz so many people did that for me. Like so many people gave me their time and were very kind, gave me advice, told me to. And like that's the difference is just like you don't have to do all of it, but even do like a third. do a couple things like you're gonna take steps in the right direction and it can make a big impact and it can change your life

and tell them what you're doing. If you're taking one of those networking meetings and you're a guy just trying or gal just trying to get ahead like

do the things they said like read the book or go meet the person or whatever and then say hey thanks for the advice I did that

you got to build a network like you know who's really good at that

Hunter. Yeah,

dude. Hunter crushes the followup like none other. He dude, first time I met with Hunter, I was like, "Oh, this guy gets it." Like, and I gave him a bunch of advice because he was putting out content, the the Relentless College Entrepreneur podcast and all the stuff he was doing with at the time, Simpler Living, like, and he like started to put the stuff into action. Then I see him, he sends me a letter with like a custom

wax like seal on it.

And then he posted on his Instagram the like time lapse of him making this seal. So, not only do I have this letter that's just so heartfelt and intentional, then I see that like this thing took 50 minutes to like warm this wax up and like put the seal on and I'm like, "Dude, this guy gets it."

That's the type of stuff that has been tossed out the window since I had a had a kid and got married. But I would love to be that level of

when you're just like the solo single guy like making it happen. You got time to do wax followup.

And some people are just getting drunk at Kilroy should be making wax letters. So Max takes initiative, does some followup. Tyler's like, you're surprised. Where does that come to the portion where you're like, "Let's work together. Let's let's do business."

Yeah. The next step that he gave me was, "If you want to join the brokerage, go join the brokerage." I'm like, "Great. I know nobody at Properties Indie. Like, I don't know the next step." So, I get on the phone with whoever, probably Rosie is who you connect me with, and meet with his mentor, Rex Fischer, who is a dear mentor of mine. Now we have a meeting and Rex ships me off to this like other office that would be closer to my home in Brownsburg. He's like just go meet with those guys, join the brokerage, get on their team. They'll be great.

You can just join a brokerage like

Yeah, you can just walk in and give them your license because you're going to pay, right, to be a part of the club. And they they ship me off to the Brownsburg guys. They're dismantling their team. And I'm like, I want to be on a team. I don't want leads. I want to get in somebody's passenger seat and learn how they are being successful.

That's what I told him. That's probably the only words that I said at the meeting, it sounds like was, "I want to get in your passenger seat, dude, and like learn from you." And I go meet with the browser guys. They push me back to Rex. So, I text Rex that night and I'm like, "I'm joining your team. Can I come to your team meeting on Friday?"

And he's like, "Well, I don't know if we have He's like, "Fine, just come." I come to the meeting, show up, Tyler looks over, and he's like, "Why are you what are you doing here? We're we had coffee like a week ago. Why are you at my team meeting?" And from there, I just sat down next to him and I can vividly remember he's like on the phone speaker phone closing a deal with Josh Matthews in a conference room at the Broadripple office. And I'm listening to these guys yin and yang back and forth uh on this property on Denny Street.

I know that for a fact because I'm sitting at the end of the conference table like watching the Wolf of Wall Street like right in front of my eyes like what is going on? The penny stocks being sold. We're getting the property done. I'm like I want it. I want to be in and I want to be in in that club. Uh, and shortly after that, I like figured it all out and sat in Tyler's passenger seat.

At that point in your real estate career, had you sold the house?

I had went pending on two for like a relational thing, and they fell apart. So, no, I'd sold nothing.

So, you had never sold a house,

basically. So, I didn't I didn't know like all of that, but I do remember this D Street. I never ever should have been selling this house on the street. It might have been the worst house ever, and I've learned a lot since then, but it's like it was like the heart of the near said. But the next step was I basically had like this listing that was like on the far east side, a bit rough. A tenant had like tore it up and the guy was distressed and he wanted to list this property with me.

So I was like, "Okay, great." And I put like Max Moore as the co- agent. And I just like, "Max, you're doing all this." And I was like expecting again him to like throw his hands in the air, give up, and not sell it. And he was like about 45 days later after blood, sweat, and tears, he was like, "Oh yeah, I closed this property and it's done." And then like fast forward about like a few of more quite a few more of those deals.

He was like a because I was like bet I made it. I have this protege that's going to do all my work for me and I'm going to make a cut. But then he leveled up and was like sent me this like if you know Maxi sends very long text messages usually with like a spreadsheet or a Google doc attached and it was like a very long text. One of the longest text I've ever seen. I had to scroll multiple times.

Did you have to click the three dots on it? Was it that long?

Yes.

Oh. And it was uh and it was like essentially the pitch like let's start a team. Let's do this. We don't need this other team standing in our way because I was paying you know dividends to this other team. And Max to his credit had a lot up his sleeve and was way has is way way better than me at operations, logistics, uh all that systems. And like since then it's been like

how long from like that that first Friday meeting did it take for you guys to be like we should go do this on our own?

Yeah, I transfer my license December 21st of 2022 and Roots LLC date is uh June 23rd

2023.

Six months.

Six months.

It was extremely fast. People thought probably thought we were idiots. They thought like oh rut

and Rex is a dear mentor to both of you.

Yeah whose team we were on. Um, you were on Rex's team when like anyone know Rex is like at properties here in Indie like they crush. Was he like upset that you guys were leaving? Like he didn't seem especially thrilled the meeting where we told him cuz I think we were a large part of his volume. He's he might be listening to this. So like we love Rex. He's been amazing and we continue to receive his mentorship and add value to the brokerage. But I would say like we were doing a pretty substantial volume for that team that year, but they've picked it up and been fine. I mean, he's post uh having to get, you know, down in the trenches and down like he's he's made it like he he can find people to replace him. Max and Tyler, right? So

Rex was huge for me in like the growth in that 6 months. Tyler gave me 3902 Northbolt and everybody can look it up. This house when we closed it ended up the hot water heater, AC, and furnace were stolen while we were under contract. And like Tyler knows, I just dealt with it. And we got postclosing and I'm like, "Dude, what do I do? Everything's stolen." And and this buyer's freaking out on me and it's my first time selling a house. So like it's a huge deal. That has never happened since.

Wait, is this the one on the far east side? 392 North.

So they ended up they were flipping it. So it looks way better now.

Wait, so 3902 North Bolton. out.

This was the first house.

First house.

And everything gets stolen.

Everything gets stolen. No forced entry either. So like the property manager had to have taken it. And that's like there's no way that it wasn't the PM. I think my guy owed him money. So he went and took all the stuff because he knew we were selling and he's like, "Yep, this is mine."

Like who discovered this?

Uh the buyer after we closed.

You close. Buyer walks in and he's like, "Yo, this ain't right."

Yep. And I'm like freaking out sitting in the Chipotle parking lot. 1000 p.m. on a Friday.

Now, now you see why I was like, "Yeah, I'm going to partner with this guy who's done like whatever how many transactions?" It wasn't that many. Cuz he walked through basically a mountain pile of crap. His first deal.

What was like What was your first call? So, after the person gets done of just absolutely screaming at you, I'm s about how there's no water. There's no what?

There's no water heater, furnace, or AC.

Furnace.

We're talking about like 20 grand worth of material at a minute.

Who do you call? the first time I'm hearing somebody.

I called the called the seller and I explained to him and I go, "Do you think it was the like" Like I start putting the things together, getting down into the trenches,

bro. PI Max over here

and he on Monday calls me and goes, "I think it was the property manager. It's my fault. I didn't pay him for the water heater." So, he repoed everything out of spite. I will handle it. And I and I gave him a contact to like call his insurance company and see if they would cover it. They cut a $1,500 check plus my guy matched it with a three grand check and it ended up being $4,500. Cut a check to the buyer. Buyer was happy because they were flipping the house anyways. They were going to replace that stuff. Like, let's be honest. And yeah, you know, the comments will flood and say this the buyer probably took it because he didn't do your due diligence and go check it. The the property manager admitted that they're like, "Yeah, he did. He owed us money, so that's what we do."

Wow. That's crazy. like putting that all together like your first deal like like sweet success like yes I closed one and

it was all for like a thousand dollar commission

right

but through that you asked about Rex and like how Rex felt you know us leaving and going certain routes Rex summoned me to his office to meet weekly after I mutually leased and in real estate whenever both sides can't agree you mutually lease I basically was writing offers for these two investors non-stop all day long and they were like backing out of every deal which is a no bueno situation. Rex summoned me to mentor me. He's like, "You're doing all the right things, kid, but here's how you have to go about it." And like walked me through the process. So, when we get to that six-month mark and Tyler and I are showing up to the team meeting and counting on our fingers when they're like, "Team pended 10 deals this month." And Tyler and I are like, "Eight of them."

Naturally, my brain starts going, "Well, I can get my own admin staff. I can get my own operations going here." And Rex and I had very intentional conversations prior to me sending Tyler the whole business plan and the whole proposal to go out and the P&L projections and all that stuff and uh that was brought up through that mentorship. So he was excited for us and continued to mentor us along the way. I think to Rex's credit he never showed me probably some of the scarcity that he had. like he was very abundant forward facing, but I'm sure backstage he was like, "Oh, what am I going to do on my own team?"

And I don't know if these guys truthfully, this is the best idea for them, but he stayed committed and let us have the freedom to go stub our toes. Cuz where would we have gone if we messed up? We would have come right back to Rex.

Yeah. Rex is just that dude that actually does what's best for you um and leads with abundance. And uh

you have to have those mentors in your life.

He always says like I'm like, "Rex, how can we pay you back?" And he's like, "Just keep rising the tide." because he's like rise and tide all boats will rise, right? So, it's like

and he has the catch all, right? He's got the brokerage which we still reside and we're still partnered with.

Yeah. So, I mean there's there's benefits there and it's cool to see like kind of the coaching tree when you see like people go out and flourish and do their own thing and you know I hope that most uh mentors and teachers would be like, you know, I want people that come up under me to go out and build more and do better and be better. You know, that's kind of like, right,

I feel like the dream if you're like truly a selfless mentor, right? So, cool. Kudos to you, Rex. Keep up the good work, man. Here's what I want to know. One thing that that I've learned about the Root Realy team is you guys do a great job of complimenting each other.

The other might not be as strong. Not going to say weak, but we'll say not as strong. How do you go about finding or maybe like identifying a good partner and like what makes your guys's partner dynamic work so well? For me, it was very intentionally going and finding somebody who can walk into a room of people and have a gravitational pull and connect, which is Tyler's like that's what he does. He connects with people. He has this whole tree of how to make a million dollars before 30.

And and the whole principle is based on connectivity and network. For me, he said it. I didn't speak in the first meeting. It takes me a minute to warm up. probably the first encounter that we had actually was at a masterclass event and I had no idea who you were and like follower count or anything that you were doing. We had a very genuine conversation.

Uh but any other conversation I had that day was probably like nervous. So I needed somebody who could be the head of the snake for me and that was like the attraction partnership wise. So I think if you're more of the operational brain, you have to have the person that has that marketing uh bone because I hate

you should find someone whose superpower is your weakness, right? is the principle. I I don't know who to give credit to, but um I didn't know how much when I was running and gunning, when you're running and gunning, you don't know your blind spots. They're they're enormous, but you just don't know, and you're actually getting subtly attacked by them. I didn't know how much I was losing. And that the fact that I would never be able to have a team without someone whose brain is like Max's. So, I always say it was a genuinely a blessing from God that I met Max because I I don't can't give I wasn't hunting for Max. He just entered the picture and was exactly what I needed.

And you could have been like, let's say Max is not in the picture. You could have been an allstar real estate agent, which is like basically running your own business, you know, like talk about being a big personality, making content,

being a really good uh sales person, but there's some business components, but it's mostly selling.

Yeah. And like, you know, being a good host when you go into a property, and like, you know, be a good being a good agent and being a good business owner. Like, there's some crossover there of like running a real estate business. obviously, but like there was this operational piece that Max has that you needed to put together to make this dream team cuz I will say Tyler is so good at walking in and he's like making friends and you know all of a sudden all like everyone's just like vibing and getting along whether it's showing up to run club or the master class or whatever like go on stage and and give Tyler the mic and the intro will be nailed. I love it. Um and then as I've got to know you more Max I totally agree.

I was so genuinely fascinated like I always love people that are doing interesting things and one starting a real estate company at any at any state or any age or whatever challenging interesting but I was like this kid who bought a GNC like there has to be something going on with him that's just like

got to be a wire cross in a good way for anyone who's crazy enough to yeah to like and it's like I don't know you how old were you when I met you? 23 20 23

he was a swimmer and if you know anything about swimmers they're really good at just being having tenacity and just going through a big wall. So it's funny like Mac most people like look at something that they want to achieve and be like oh but here's the reasons I can't do this or I got to do this. He looks at it he's like all right I'm going to do it and then does XYZ to go do it. Whereas like I try to I think about it more in terms of like deficiency. He is one of the best people just running through a brick wall and

dude just put your head down and just keep going.

That's what swimmers do,

dude. I would say like so obviously a lot of people know I coach wrestling at Shitard and it's like I feel like there's like a like the morning crew like the the crew that goes in to like run or practice before school. There's always swimmers there and then it's like the after school crew too. And so I have like a a respect for swimmers because they're in the pool early, you know, hour, hour and a half, like getting a workout in before school, like for for high school, whatever, and then after uh after school, too. So, there's like a a good mutual respect there. Swimmers are just put your head down and just keep going.

Yeah. You're in a pool for like 25 hours a week to be competitive. And I think the wrestlers are right there. I've always said that those are the two hardest high school sports. And there's just something like there's just something there's wires crossed. There's wires crossed on both those sports.

Like it's not like playing basketball. Basketball is like fun. Like go basers. Come on. We kind of talked about the partnership, how you guys got to know each other, you know, finding someone who compliments where you're you're deficient at. Let's talk about in general like how much has Indiana and Indianapolis's hot real estate market uh played a portion of your guys' success thus far too.

Right. So it's it's one thing to be like time, place, put all those things together and like magic happens because you guys are up to I think I said 11 staff members, 11 people as part of the organization now.

Yeah, a total of 11 eight being agents.

That's awesome. Like one, congrats on that. That's super sick. You're like running a team. Like you're making it happen.

Over three years.

Two and a half.

Two and a half years. Let's freaking go. Um the other thing people know is that the past two and a half, three years here in Indie has been bonkers. So, talk to me about what makes Indianapolis such a special real estate market.

We are the best market if you want to build wealth in real estate. And and here's what I mean. We are like number 11 in terms of uh price to income ratio. So, like number one is going to be like West Virginia, super cheap homes. So, like we're number 11 in California. We have the top

because there's not really a quality metric in that like price to

it's just like you can actually afford property. I mean, it's harder, don't get me wrong, but like the median priced home, like if you go to like some of these neighborhoods in the near east side, like you can get an amazing home for like 200k, right? And it's like you put $5,000 down with a FHA loan, like a really good home.

Yeah.

And so, like it's a it's a genuinely great market for getting one, barriers of entry are low here, and then two, uh, just stability. So, it's like right now a place like Austin is down like 20%. I don't know if you know this, they're down 20% in prices right now as of uh May or June of 2025. We're up 16%. Even though rates double.

When people say down, what do you mean by like price

or price is down?

Medium price and transactions are

it's all down

and we're up even though rates went from what 2 and a half to seven. We've chugged along. Like nobody's talking about how strong

is still going up. Like the value of homes

pricing is still going up. Affordability isn't tracking higher. So, it's not that it's this weird combination of when it gets too expensive based on your median income to buy a house and the house prices go way up, it becomes harder to buy a home, right? You can't afford it as much. In Indie, we're tracking steadily together. Job growth and opportunity is increasing.

Okay. So, so earnings are going up alongside of house cost price, median median price, what are you guys, what data are you using there?

Talking more like median price.

Median home price. And when you're so when you think about the the duplex that you bought in your house hacking, why would you have bought that if it doesn't increase in value, right? You would have just rented it and you would have let somebody else buy it.

So that's important. It's still affordable to buy, but you also still get that appreciation. I was looking at a stat this week. In 10 years,

10 years, think back to 2014. We are 106% up on medium price. 106%. You can buy a house in 2014 for 100 grand. Sell it today for 212 grand.

True.

You just made 112 G's doing nothing besides just owning the place.

How much of that came from like 2019 to 2023?

I feel like it went bonker. So I bought my house in 2019, bought another house in 2020, bought another house in 2022.

So here's the thing with that. Let me on that. Like yes, there was a substantial low inventory, especially it hit its low point in like the around the early spring of 2022. Extremely direly low amount of homes in the market. So yes, prices went up. They were also doing quantitative easing. So like right the interest rates hit about

five% around there.

Yeah. Um22.

Yeah. Yeah. It was a little delayed. But um here's the thing. The inventory problem in Indie isn't totally solved. Like you might assume, oh, it's all over. Home prices are going to be in a bubble and they're going to start trending down. Like, no. The reason why they've steadily been going up, not as drastically, is because we still have very low inventory for the amount of net migration and net job creation in Indianapolis. We our GDP has grown faster than any Midwest city in the past 10 years. I mean, you had other guests. I mean, we have a large with Lily with all this stuff happening. I mean, we have a large economy and not enough homes for people.

I always say the interesting piece is

I feel like Indie grows, central Indiana grows at the expense of the reaches of Indiana. Like people like me from smalltown Indiana that see opportunity in Indianapolis and like graduate college and don't go back to their small town and just come and like add a building block on central Indiana. Whether it's I mean it spreads further out like we're talking the Sheridans, the Danvilles, the South Side even further, the East Side even further, the Greenfields, Hancock County, like but that's all at the my my I'm not an economist, but my impression is that it's all people coming from smalltown Indiana and then like putting more building blocks on.

I think you'd be surprised. I think there's more people than ever moving from Chicago.

California is huge cuz you can This is what they're doing. They're renting their place that they own in California for 10 grand a month and moving here

and they're renting here and they're renting here.

That's so smart.

All these rentals up for like four grand a month over on like uh Cottage Place or like you know Windsor Park or some of these areas like

my portfolio is up 30 40% in the past two years on rent. That doesn't happen overnight. Like that is it's it's wild.

And by the way, all these people do want to buy and when rates tick down just a little bit. I mean, we're going to see some gigantic appreciation increases in the next 10 years in Indie, like hundreds of thousands. I I'm legitimately just when you look at the supply demand because a lot of people are choosing to rent right now and that want to buy. Like I bet a lot of people listening even are like, "Oh yeah, I do want to buy a house in the next 10 years." They're going to. So, I mean,

and there's certain neighborhoods and places that are just staples like I mean, we've bought our three properties all around Broadbull because it's like I'm just betting on the area like you know, they're not building new lots in.

Yeah. There's no new real estate new

versus like as it continues to go out north and north and further north. I mean, we had um Clint Mitchell from Estridge and he said his prediction for 15 years was 296th Street. like there will be developments going up all the way up to Baker's Corner in

I mean Cooko is already getting a lift right now.

It's easy to see though like it's expanding. We're a donut when you look at 465 and outside of that we continue to still be a circle. Like I grew up in Avon, you grew up in Avon and we both coincidentally grew up as west as you can go in Avon and still have that zip code at the time. And when you reflect back on that time, how like uh country boon was it to go and and drive out to Danville? Like why would you go to Danville for anything? And now I live in Danville and to me it feels like Avon when I was growing up.

Well, I appreciate you making a road trip here to the studio, man. Coming in from Danville.

Hey, we had our team meeting in the Broad.

Yeah, right. Yeah, you guys. We're putting them up in Bottle Works. Come on. But that's great. Like it's it's not that crazy because even like, you know, if I think about Greenfield and uh Greenwood, like that place is booming. Southside's booming. Well, I think what you're seeing, Nate, is that like I actually think some of these peripheral small towns are going to do really well. Greenfield, Lebanon, Whitestown didn't have streets like 3 years ago. Like if you go look at the Google Maps 3 years ago and look at it today, it's tripled how many little tiny streets they have neighborhoods.

The small towns around the Metro Indie are going to be great places. I I do think some of the burban Indiana of the the state are going to struggle because they're not close to the amenities that India has, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I I say this is like if you're exporting your this is this is not a white collar or a blue collar podcast. It's it's different.

But if you're exporting all your college talent to Indianapolis, like you're going to be in trouble in the future. So like go to any small town in Indiana, go to their high school, look at their validatoran joint like top 10's in the class. How many of them are coming back to the town? M that's kind like if you think of and again I am pro bluecollar like you don't have to be good in school to start a business grow a business any of that stuff but like if you're losing your 10 smartest kids a class of 67 like the top 10 people all leave and don't come back it's tough to have business owners it's tough to have like economic growth if they're not coming back to their small town to be close to their family because they can FaceTime twice a week. That's my that's my hot take. We might clip that.

Might get some poor feedback from my Facebook fans, but you know, uh just we're just keeping it real. When we think about central Indiana, uh a lot of people think that like they missed the bubble, like they missed the Broadrip bubble, they missed the Fountain Square bubble, they missed Bates Hendricks, they missed Irvington. Like where do you guys see as opportunity? Whether it's for people that want to buy and live there for their quality of life, or on the other side, they want to be investors.

I mean, I still think we're on the bottom of the curve. We're not the the top of the curve. Uh we're still at the part that's building to get to hyperbol hyperbolic um because a lot of the commercial investment starts first and then resident. So I mean like there's there was what like 14 billion coming to downtown Indie between like bottle works and uh Signia Hotel and uh you know

the new fever place so much right so I mean like all that's going to have reverberations

whatever happens for India if that ever exists

but um I mean if the question is where you miss the boat I mean like I think that there's a lot of opportunity um in the near west side and nobody's talking about it but that's That's why there's opportunity. You can buy 150k. One of the first agents on our team bought a house for 125k and sold it for 175 two years later in Riverside. I mean, Riverside, but down by Guben House has a large. They're building new build duplexes and H homes is building. I mean, there's a ton of opportunity there and it's quite liveable.

This episode is brought to you by our friends at Roots Reality Co. , the absolute best real estate team here in central Indiana. Listen, if you're looking to buy, sell, or invest in real estate, you need people who actually care about our Indiana community. That's Tyler and Max over at Roots Reality. These guys aren't just slinging houses. They're building communities, helping people find homes that actually fit their lives and making the whole process way less stressful.

They're not some big corporate machine. They're real people who know Indiana inside and out. Whether you're a first-time buyer, an investor looking for your next deal, or just trying to get top dollar for your home, these guys have the expertise and the hustle to make it happen. They're out here doing great work, not just in Indianapolis, but all across central Indiana and beyond. So, if you're in the market or even if you're thinking about it, hit up Tyler and Max at Roots Reality Co. and they'll take good care of you.

Check them out at rootsreality. co or meet them in person at one of their upcoming investor master classes. More details on their website, rootsreality. co. Let's get back into it. If you had three chips, three chips to like place bets.

We're gonna we're gonna do this. This will be fun. Three chips. One bet is like, okay, your safety. If you had like put real put money into buy a house somewhere safe,

you had like your medium risk like, oh, like it's trending upward. And then you had your home run risky like the the 20 to1 return.

How how would you place your three chips in the Indianapolis real estate market?

Safe bet. I'm betting in Danville because of the amount of people moving that direction that grew up in Avon.

There is a lot of people moving in and there is a lot of new

Bro number nine in housing starts in Danville.

You're you're saying the safest bet that you could place around

because in Danville right now you can go and buy and add value and refinance and keep liquidity low and the rent to price ratio is strong enough. There's enough people that want to rent and have the jobs to do it that they're fine.

Don't get into an argument with uh with an with an econ numbers guy. I'm not going to do that on not going to do that on the air. No. All right. I trust you. Like that's just like a wild one. I did not see Danville coming.

When you do your small town breakdown, you'll have to do a a before and after because that square is about to completely change.

How long?

5 10 year scale.

I mean, the square is going to look completely different. It's going to look a lot more like Noblesville, but Noblesville is doing fantastic. I been there recently. Noblesville is I just did a an interview with the mayor of Noblesville, Mayor Jensen. Great dude. Like they are

they've done something, right? I was there. It was like a million small little artisan shops and little restaurants.

They even went to some of the like law offices and like local stuff that was like, hey, not so much like commercial uh like like things that you can't walk into or that you don't want to walk into. Like we don't need to walk into a law office or an accountant or whatever. and they said, "Hey, would you guys be willing to go upstairs on this building cuz you're a law office so we could put something that's like,

you know, that you need a storefront for like a boutique or whatever." And a lot of them did.

It's exactly what I'm hearing around our square cuz that's what it is. Cuz guess what's in the middle of the square? The courthouse. So, of course, law offices can walk to the courthouse. They need to, but they don't need to be downstairs.

They don't need to be like right with the huge picture glass window. Like, no. Do

nor does the real estate company. So many of like or the Yeah, you could go on for days. The appraisers office, all the things.

So your safest bet in central Indiana is Danville.

Yeah, I'm betting on Danville.

Respect, Tyler. What's the safest bet for real estate in central Nia?

It's it's really hard not to go for one of the periphery markets like uh even like a Lebanon. No, Lebanon, the Leap District. I mean, if you're seeing how fast some of these hoes are selling,

like I'm talking about like safe as in like my grandma is retiring in 5 years and she's putting her life savings into this and just doesn't want it to lose.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm going to say what I would do, which is what I am currently doing, which is which is Broadripple.

That's what I tried and true.

They're not making any more Broadripple. Like Lebanon, like I don't know. There's still a lot of ifs for me there.

You kind of see it in Cookamo. It's playing out right now. So the danger with Broadripple is uh if there's a general decline in safety and infrastructure in Indie that goes too far to where there's a max exodus, there is some danger there. Like Caramel is going to be safe. Their parks are going to be clean. The roads are going to be good.

This has been the interesting part of I mean Caramel's a pretty safe.

I mean if you want to go safe, we can go to legitimately safe which is what? Fischers, Zensville, Caramel in the nation.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think like you're going to go fishers, but like I I would say like in terms of I think if you had to put your life savings in a place that's going to still exist in the same capacity in 10 years, like I feel like Caramel's a pretty good bet there. Pretty safe. Uh but I I like the diverse the like the diverse schools of thought here. I think it's pretty cool. We're gonna skip the middle one. We're just going to go the riskiest. Like if you had to just place a risky bet somewhere here in central

risky but you believe it will do good go hockey stuff.

If you had you know 100k to invest in real estate and you believe that it would be worth a million dollars in 10 or 15 years like where's going to return the biggest amount if it hits

west bank of the white river string town the valley neighborhood

that that would be easily right by Eleno the big glass shiny building Eleno. Oh, right.

All that real estate. It used to be like 25K for a house not not that long ago.

It's not that far off still. Like you can you can you're right under six figures,

right? But they're paying stupid price for some of those.

That's the old GM stamping plant. Like that whole area.

It's already up. I mean, I don't know. It's not working yet, but it's up.

But like the Oh, I haven't been down to see like the actual structure is up.

It's beautiful. Look at it. And look at the real estate next to it. You'll be your jaw will drop and you'll think I should have bought this already. like and they're they're trading for the margins in some of these distressed homes that they're trading at are unreasonable.

Let's just go take a peek.

It's because they know what the appreciation is going to be.

Max, where would you place your bet?

Littleflower or like Community East, Tuxedo Park on the east side of Indie. Uh the the reason why that is is because there's been enough of activity on that direction that I just think the needle continues to move, which for anybody that invests is probably the boring pick. I'm a big little flower guy. That's the place where I invest quite a bit of money in the hockey stick direction. Like that those are my riskier bets if you will, but honestly become more of my headache-free bets.

Little flower is the um cheap man's This is going to be very offensive to people live there, but the cheap man's Irvington, but because of that, it it has a large bluecollar presence and a large historic Catholic presence. Little flower, uh there's a Catholic church. It's very stable um amidst kind of the rough and tough uh rough and tumble east side. Yeah. I mean, there's still properties for 35K. It Oh, that's a lot in Stringtown for 35K. 150. But then there's a renovated one.

Yeah. Buy that lot. I mean, I'm telling you right now, go buy that lot and I guarantee

What do I got to put down on a lot for 35K?

35K.

Yeah. There's not many lot loans unless you're building a thing on it.

Here we go. We're buying 271 Miley A

39.

Build a new group duplex. Shout out to New Group. Building a duplex with them. into a group.

You are?

Yeah. Yeah.

Hey, there we go. You could build one of those over there. It'd be sick.

Wow. Okay. Those are where you're placing your bets. You guys are just more in tune with like the downtown area of what's going on there. Have I missed the boat on Whiteland?

If we're saying 296th Street North,

Yeah.

are we thinking whatever negative 296th Street is south?

Here's the difference about the north and north. The north has momentum right out of the city.

You bleed into Caramel, you keep on going.

The southwest, Andy's similar in dissimilar ways are a bit cut off. The north side does bleed.

You have a mall on either side. Which mall are you going to? Like, which one feels better?

The south side in particular, there's a bit of a even cultural shift. It's much more like Kentucky down there, don't you? I mean, have you I mean, they have an accent down there.

Hot take.

They have an I'm not joking. Go to go to Martinsville. They have an accent. They do. They're not far from You're not uh

I didn't think I I wasn't going wide as I traveled south. I get it. I get what you're saying. No, and I love it down there. Um, they get on their four-wheel, they go hunting. I mean, it's a different scene down there. They're like the deep south.

I'm not even joking. Even even parts of Greenwood and Center Grove, you have that influence more on it.

That is fair.

It's influence. It's not so much that they're they're straight up hicks. I'm not trying to say they're univilized hicks. They're great.

If there's not a driver tractor, I'm in a very big ditch.

Oh my gosh. I'm going to get a lot of hate mail. You are now going to have to sponsor all their driver tractor school days. Gosh.

Amen. Dude, I don't know. I think that if I was taking a bet What do we know about Morrisville?

I know. I got Gray's Brothers just closed.

I think that I might take a bet on Mosesville.

You should buy Grace Brothers.

What's Do you know Brothers? The cafeteria thing. It closed.

Wait, what? I'm taking that bet away. Honestly, I'm not the I'm not the older commercial.

I'm I'm not the expert here. That's why I have you guys on the show. Uh, I just go I go safe in Broadway. Like I don't want my 100x to be Max's safe bet, but honestly that's probably a good idea. People our age have trouble buying homes right now. They like are scared or like say, "Oh, it's too expensive. Do this." Coach us through. What would you say? What do you say to the 25 to 30 year old that's trying to buy a home for the first time? How do how do they get a house?

How old were you when you bought your first?

I was 23. 22.

How old were you?

23. I was 19. So, we're all way above the curve. That's the first and foremost thing that somebody needs to hear. 23 19. So, beyond far ahead where you're supposed to be and it'll pay us dividends down the road.

How did you buy your first house? What was the first thing that you did? Did you have a tenant living with you? Did your house hack?

Roommates.

Roommates. Roommates.

Roommates.

Roommates.

Same here. The idea.

Yeah. Uh then my now wife moved in with me instead of a roommate, but she still paid rent like a roommate.

That's my point, right? You have to house hack. You have to bring down the barrier of entry so that you can break in, which would be via a house hack.

Yeah. Here's my number one thing is like, how do I take every other 22 23 year old's biggest expense and make mine the smallest y and make it a profit center?

So smart.

Everyone's spending. And at the time, dude, I think my mortgage was like 1,200 bucks and I had three roommates that were all paying like 450. And I was like, dude, I get paid every month to live. This is sick. Like greatest I think it was the greatest financial idea I've ever had.

And the synergy behind that that isn't even being mentioned is the principal pay down over that year. You're paying down your principal as you continue to move along and you are not putting any equity into it. So not only is it appreciating, you're having principal pay down. You have no monthly expense. you can go and take big risks like starting get in and bringing all this content to life which was all fueled on the back of house hacking.

Honestly, it was

it was this is true.

That's how I was able to get into real estate. I mean, I didn't have this huge liability of a $2,000 rent check was legitimately I actually sold so people probably thought I was like, "Oh, how this guy this guy must have had a inherited bunch of money." I bought two investment properties at age 26, a quad on the near east side and a single family home. And I bought a new home in Broadle. And people probably were like, "What the hell?" Like, "How did he, you know, he must have got a big check from his family member." I actually had comments. No, I sold my first house and it had doubled in valued because I was because I bought it in Irvington when it was kind of up and coming and you know, we did some stuff to it.

Sometimes you just get a little bit too.

Yeah. But that you got to you got to be in the game to get lucky. Yeah. Right. You got to have the equity snowball starting when you're young. So, like the last thing I'll say is we had a podcast with John Murphy.

He's one of the most successful mortgage originators in the state. And he said, "Young people need to be grabbed by shirt callers and brought to a a loan uh originator and have that first consultation, not because you're going to be sold a mortgage day one, but because they're going to put you on a plan to know here's where your credit is, here's where your DTI is, your debt to income, and here's what you could be pre-approved. And if you need if you want to be pre-approved for more or build it up, here's what you can do." That plan is worth its weight in gold. And it also gives a game plan to the realtor. And if you don't know a good mortgage broker, mortgage lender, you need to find a good realtor.

Obviously, that's why we exist is to try to help people connect the dots there. And a lot of people get confused at the one stop of the realtor. And they're like, "Go talk to John Smith or John Murphy. We can just use John Murphy. Uh or Renatada Lima with Approved Mortgage. Go talk to those guys and come back to me."

And it's this thing where they don't pick up the phone and they don't call because they think the realer should have the financial acumen to explain here's what you need to cut in your monthly budget to get preapproved to get on the track. That's not our our job is to connect and at some capacity. For me, it's like I had to go get a a side hustle to buy my first house. I was obsessed with the idea of owning a home. I rented one singular apartment and it was because my girlfriend wife now did not she felt like it was too much commitment to buy a home. I'm like you're not buying the home.

I am.

Wait, it all panned out.

Yeah,

but the commitment to buy a home early on. Give me

the guy rewired his own house.

I did fully and I had to put sweat equity

up. You rewired your That's why you need a max board in your life, dude. wiring, but

but that house in Avon like in 3 years just similar to Tyler almost tripled my equity position

just from purchasing it

and they think the people think this can't continue.

What What would you say? So So right out of school when you're young, when you're single, easy to house hack like you're already doing it.

If you have a W2 job, go take it to the bank. Stop looking at apartments right now.

Yeah. When you and your three friends house hack together. No, but look at my rentals. Like make sure you

make sure you check out my rentals stuff. Um, but what about the like young family that's still living in an apartment somewhere? Like they maybe just got married. They're living in an apartment, but they're like, "Ah, we want to buy a house, but we can't get exactly what we want in the location that we want." Like we're we're dual income. But like

that is genuinely harder than the single person.

So much harder.

Um, they have some bigger liabilities that are harder to move

baggage. um you have to be get on like a one to twoyear plan and you have to go uh scorch earth in pursuit of that plan and you have to know hey my family's um future depends on me taking these steps because I will tell you this you don't want to be renting in 1015 years with what rents are going to charge and you're going to have nada to show for it zero dollars in your pocket to show from that here's the plan you go on Amazon and you buy there is a book by bigger pockets called like how to invest in real estate or the rental property I can imagine the title. I can't name the name. Uh, pick up that. Pick up the like road mapap to financial freedom by Dave Ramsey. Start listening to the roots podcast and call me in a year and a half or Tyler or one of our team members and be ready to purchase a house because there's an overhaul in that example of baggage that you're bringing into that marriage that you need to cleanse and get on the same page very quickly on financial status.

If you're still renting, it's because there's something there's credit, student loans, something that went wrong along the path that you have not been able to save up enough money to get over the curve. We're talking three and a half% down for an FHA loan

in a market in Indianapolis with a median home price of like 275. Not that much money.

Shockingly low.

It's not that much.

We have many buyers that because of some of the seller credits they get and the tax preparation zero actually walk away.

I think I get paid to buy money. We've had people walk away with money in their pocket.

I'll take two,

right?

Yeah.

We're gonna We We've got Trace live in the studio, our employee. We're going to help him buy a house for zero bucks. I guarantee it. Cuz we'll find the deal that's deep enough that they can get there. And I'm not putting that out. You know, everybody get get your 5% saved up to put down.

You have to have the equity. But you need

this is not Wait, this is not financial advice. Do do this at your own and at your own risk.

I always say to make matters simple, I always say you're really safe. If you have $30,000, which some people are like, that's an insurmountable amount of money. Okay, that includes some reserves, you know, factoring in if they're broke.

But if you have $30,000 and you are renting, there's no reason if you're if you're going to live here for more than two years, go buy a damn house. There's no reason why you shouldn't. I think Dave Ramsey's first step is like, go sell everything in the house to the point to where the kids think that like something's tragically wrong. like they're they're worried about what clothes they're going to wear tomorrow because you sold it all. Like go reset and get yourself cleansed. Yeah.

To get on an equity track because here's the bad thing. What the median average age of buying a house is 30 plus.

You're late. You're too late. If you don't have retirement by that age, the amount of money that you are going to continually pay to get back on track, I fullheartedly believe you're late.

Here's my here's my thing. If you're you said 30 grand is the number you need to get to. you if you're not there.

That's uh for it to be very very conservative.

Yeah. Like if you spent 300 days

Uber driving or door dashing or doing whatever and put that money put that money like you know go for four hours two nights a week or whatever it is. Just get it to $100. Like turn off turn on your Uber app. Turn off your Uber app when

this is my story.

Hit to Were you driving?

This is what I did. That was my that was

that was your side hustle was Uber.

I clocked into Target at 8 a.m. Clocked out around 2:00. clocked into GNC at 2:30, clocked out around 9, jumped in my car, drove until 12, and did it all over again.

And you just, but it's not forever. It's a short time, but it's like, hit your number, whatever the number is. Boom, there you go.

And I was working like a dog. And people were throwing parties back in my apartment that I would come home to and go to sleep at 3:00 a.m. and wake up and keep going. It was a great time to be alive while doing college for like a 19, 20-year-old.

I was Yeah, I was fresh out of high school.

Heck yeah. Um, gentlemen, we come down. I could talk forever. We could literally make a full three-hour Joe Rogan episode, but we've come to the end of the show where we get to talk about all sorts of fun things in our lightning round. Everyone talks about buying a house and putting some sweat equity in. If there was one fix of $1,000 or less that people could do to their house to increase the value, what would it be? This is really, really basic. I would paint the front door a cool color. I would probably paint the exterior uh like a sage green or a dark blue or something. I would get new address um like the trendy thinner address lines with a wood background and you know paint the trim. That's what I would do. Completely changes the whole appearance of the house and that's going to pop on like Zillow, Red Fin, etc.

So you're basically saying like paint the brick,

get the gutters going lipstick on a

So that was more than thousand, but just the address.

I don't think you'd spend more than a thousand doing that.

Maybe the whole exterior of the home, but like

just the front,

not more than a thousand,

right? No shot.

Some elbow grease, too.

Freaking paint brushes.

Max, what would you do?

I would go inward kitchen and primary bath cell. And so, you know, kitchen cabinets, paint them something that isn't the color brown. It can be whatever color you want, just not brown. Not going to say white cabinets cuz it's 2025 and those are out. It should be something like a nice sagey green or a moody color. uh change your sink from the old uh the silver into a nice newer uh very functional black hardware, maybe gold hardware, could be. And if you can squeeze it, if you can shake it, uh get some LED lighting in there and get rid of the boob lights.

Oh,

the boob lights.

The boob lights are so out. You walk through

I got double boob lights in my house.

Oh, we got to upgrade yours.

There's the flat LED ones. They just wire right in. Very easy. It's like 50 bucks.

Very minimal cost. We can get you a a handyman.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm No, I can do it myself, dude. Come on.

I'll send I'll send you a YouTube video 3 hours later.

No, I'm actually like semi handy, especially when I send pictures to chat GPT and ask like, "How do you wire this thing?"

This is also not advised. Do not do that. Do not use GPT.

Chat GPT could be wrong sometimes,

right? Um, out of YouTube, who's the better negotiator? Max is has a better grasp of numbers. I think really slowly. So, if it's in the heat of the moment, I don't want to negotiate salaries or complex seller financing terms, like I will need to take some serious time. We've never done a deal across the table, but uh I I'll let Max I I'll I'll give Max like the numbers and like uh logistical.

You don't want to argue with someone with with the numbers.

Yeah. I I think I'm my strength is more convincing people in the relational side. I think I'm pretty good at at doing that for clients and getting the other agents to get on our side.

You'll stand firm and not care. Like, you'll stand firm and and know that you should stand firm. I'll probably waver and be like, "Well, if you're going to stand firm, we can go around about it like this."

Oh, there it is. Right there. He just gave it up. He conceded. Tyler's a better negotiator.

Right. I'll give it to him.

There we go. Um, what's the weirdest thing you found on a walkthrough?

A homeless guy sleeping in the closet, which I thought was where it ended. Just that, right? I'm like going through doing a walkthrough video for a contractor to scope out the work.

We need we need that video.

Pop open the door. Boom. There's somebody is. I'm like, "Oh, whoa. He didn't move. I didn't want I I'm not going to test the waters." Shut the door. I go upstairs. Guy in the bathroom passed out as well. Come around the corner. Guy's coming up the stairs. Scares the ever living crap out of me. It was just hoarded with squatters. But when you walk in at face value, there was nobody. It was vacant. But as I kept getting deeper into the house, there was a total of four people just in there.

I would have given it up. I would not be an agent anymore.

Yeah, it was pretty freaky.

I'm out.

So, I actually do have one.

Wait, did they say anything to you?

Equivalent to zombie like like I mean, we're talking needles all over the place and it was a bad situation.

And this was Max's first house in the class.

That was my first listing.

Yeah.

Tyler.

Yeah. We walked into a little rougher neighborhood and there was this old guy, gentleman watching TV and next to him was a shotgun. I did not want to walk into this unit. It was a rental unit. He was renting it and he was a tenant and there's a I don't know if it's loaded or not. So like that was my my heart was pounding pretty

shotgun.

It was like very close to his recliner like he could within reaching distance.

Like this guy just locked and loaded watching TV. I was very scared. He's so sweaty watching Wow. That would be that would Did you go in?

Yes. The guy with me actually he's now he works with Maxmore, but he has had a weapon and does a lot of this this type of real estate in these types of areas. He was very comfortable. I was not.

I would not be. Good for you guys.

How often are you guys checking like Zillow? Like when you drive past a cool house, you're wonder how much that is. How long are you getting on it?

My wife much more than me. She Zillow shops a lot more than me. I stick to what I am looking for myself. I'm always kind of looking for something and ready to pounce. Like a broad triple duplex. I know I know always what's on the market. Most of them are terrible prices and there's not many. But like if there's a a good br duplex on the market, I'm going to know.

Yeah, I am completely Zillow shopper. I drive past probably look up five or six houses a day. Uh and my wife, the most annoying thing that I can possibly do, she's gotten really good at it. I'm like, "Oh, go find that one." She's like, "It's not on the market." I'm like, "Check the pending. I just want to know what it sold for." and she's zooming in on the

map pilot. Um, gentlemen, we've come to the part of the show where I ask the same three questions to every guest who comes on. First question, we're going to start with Max. What's something the world needs to know about Indiana?

I think the world needs to get a grasp around how much we can punch above our weight class and just how jam-packed and rallied up this city is right now. We just got to see a historic playoff run in the Pacers. Ended in such a tragic way and all of our hearts are broken and so is everybody across the nation. Seemingly everyone wanted us to win that game as Tyrese pops off

locked and loaded to go. You know how those games start.

Nine points in the first few minutes. He was going off. That was a 30 and 20 game for sure. Um which it like that is just at the helm of what the city has done to bring the sports marketing alive. It's all bled through sports and everybody is excited to live here and the quality of life's amazing.

Tyler, what's something the world needs to know about Indiana?

So, my brother just moved to New York City and like people will ask him where where is Indiana? Like is that a state? Is that a is that a city? People don't know it actually exists because he just moved to Manhattan. So, what it is lacking

I I think it's the fact that it is a flyover state and not many people expect it to be great, but it uh it's the relationships. So they say you're a two you're a one call town two call town. So basically you call one person and they're gonna have your connection to who you need to know. Yeah. And that's so true. I mean if you're trying to meet top entrepreneurs in the city or people like Nate like just hit them up on Instagram and you can that is not like I'm I'm just using an example like that is not the norm around the country. People will blow you off like you're nothing. And that's not the case here.

Amen. I agree. So many people like when I was coming up to like gave me the time a day, took coffees when they didn't need to, didn't have to. We're way too busy. So your hospitality,

shout out to y'all. You're real. This is the question, gentlemen, where we get to shed some love to something that maybe not enough Hoosiers know about. Tyler, what is a hidden gem in Indiana?

Dorman Street.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Has this been mentioned on this podcast?

I don't think so.

I'm going to go Dorman Street. first time I So, it's this old house that was at some point probably in like the 1940s converted into a little pub. It's you can walk there from Massav. So, if you're kind of walking off, you know, a boozy night and you want a night cap, it is the perfect spot. They actually sell cigarettes in this little

I was a The thing is like I remember about street was like there were so many people smoking cigarettes.

So, it's just that place where you you grab a domestic and light a dart. Um, but it's a friendly I mean it is

respect respect to you guys.

But it's a good vibe.

Uh, Dormant Street Pub. That's a good one. Max, what's a hidden gem in Indiana?

The Time Capsule in in Danville, Indiana, which is the movie theater right on the square.

Wait, it's literally called the Time Capsule.

No, it's not. It should be. It should be. It's just a royal

a royal movie theater.

Just a royal movie theater.

Okay.

And it but it's like stepping back into time when you walk in there. It's still got the red cushy seats, the best smelling popcorn. Like I think this machine makes better popcorn than anything in New Age. It's got the old photo like like the the photo boost in there. And yeah, it's amazing. You have to you have to catch a movie there. You the movies seemingly are better. Popcorn tastes better. Soda is more bubbly. Just amazing.

There we go. I love it. The the movie theater in Danville, baby. Final gentlemen, this is how we get new recommendations for guests and learn about just hooers that are doing cool things. So, who's a Hoosier that we need to keep on our radar? Someone who's doing big things.

Shout out your dad. I know he's already been on the show. Scott Lingal. I love

He came on early on in the show, like early on in their existence, too.

I love what they're doing with High School Hustle and that program. I love being able to be involved in it. I coach swimming in the winter at Danville and then getting to engage in the school in in Avon with entrepreneurs coming up. I think High School Hustle is amazing. And what the listeners need to know and how to engage with that is not volunteering and helping somebody start up. It is the next time you need something pressure washed, going to high schoolhustle.com or.org, whatever it is, and hiring a high schooler to come do the job. Like any sweaty side hustle type activity, that's the best way to engage and give back there.

Absolutely. I had the guys come out and um

detail my car. They crushed.

They did such a good job. Like it was unreal. washing. They got baked goods. Yeah.

Oh, the baked goods. I got to check that out. Tyler, who's a Hoosier that we need to keep on our radar? Someone who's doing big things.

Addison Newell. Do you know Addison?

I've heard his name, I think, at one of the master classes before.

So, he has this big mission to bring a thousand people and a thousand businesses to the near east side. And he has this like map etched out from like Arlington Street to State Street, you know, 16th to Washington. And he's he's buying um I can say this now because they closed on the building. He bought the knee hammer building.

Yes. I just saw this post on LinkedIn.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he's uh making a co-working and I would put I would put money on that guy. I think he's doing really big things. Um and I'm excited and in in such an altruistic way. So I'm excited to see what heck continues to do.

I love it. Addison, keep up the good work, man. Thousand jobs and a thousand people to the near east side of Indianapolis.

Yeah. We're about to drop our podcast with him and go through how he purchased that building and

Yeah. Well, I guess then in that vein, if people want to connect with you guys, they want to connect with roots, they want to explore what it's like to buy a house with y'all, how do they do that?

Rootsreality.co. I mean,

we have happy hours and events every month. People can easily get plugged in and like you'll run into guys like Nate Spangle or Scott Lingal, whoever. I'm just shouting out my dad because you just mentioned him, Addison Newell. Uh, you know, so they should come to our event.

You don't have to be like a diehard real estate guy. Uh there's like a lot of people that are like on the sideline like looking to jump in and like learn more.

Just have a story on like here's what I'm looking to do and people will get you plugged in.

Hey man, like I've been to a bunch of those. At least like two or three. It's always a good time, you know. Come drink a couple beers, hang out, meet some cool people. Love it. Uh how can they find you guys?

Maxmore on Instagram and anywhere else.

Yeah, you at this point it's 2025. People shouldn't have to look very hard to like find people on social, but

yeah, Tyler_ingal and and there's going to be someone who's like, I know I should put the steps in front of me. Reach out to one of us and like get on the phone. We're not going to shove houses down your throat and be like we will set a plan and talk strategy.

Like uh Roots is a partner of ours here at Get In. And one piece that I always appreciated was that like I met Tyler at a run club. Oh my gosh. like or no well I first met you through your podcast but like nowhere throughout the process were they ever like oh my gosh like you can't hang out with us unless you buy a house from me and like it was never yeah it was never like I've w you'd be surprised I've been in so many more like transactional relationships or whatever where like if you're not buying something from them or you're not doing like then they don't want to hang out with you anymore and that was not the case here so it was like we we dated for a long time before we started working together so I appreciate you guys it's awesome to have you as partners Uh, we also have get get indiana. com/realestate. You can find out more information about them as well.

So, plenty of ways to figure it out. Just go figure it out. Um, gents, thank you for coming on. It was awesome to hear your story and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you for listening to this episode of Get In. If you like what you heard, make sure you leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

This show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level, click the link in the description to see all of my gear recommendations at sweetwater. com. If you want a behind-the-scenes look at everything we're doing across the state, make sure you follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok @ Nate Spangle. Thank you so much for listening and being part of what makes the Hoosier State great. We'll see you next time here on Get